Daddy no longer wore his black prison uniform and I understood that he had started work with the telephone company. I think he hated giving up the uniform and that is why he was so bad-tempered all the time. But I was pleased because it meant he had also given up his baton, which was the thing I feared most when he attacked me.
One day in early August, Mammy told me that they had decided to move in with her mother and father in Bolton. I experienced a sudden surge of hope – even happiness. Nanny Ramsden was the only person in the family who had ever shown me any real love.
She was big and jolly and kind and cheerful. Living with her had to be better than my life so far in Manchester, where I was dependent for everything on a brutal and sadistic father and a drug-addicted mother.
Thank God, they had not chosen to live with my other grandmother. I remembered staying with Grandma Seed only once and it had been a very unpleasant few days. She obviously hated Mammy and looked at me as though I was not a boy but a piece of dirt that someone had brought in on their shoe. She was a sour-faced, bitter and demanding old woman and Mammy and I had secretly nicknamed her ‘the Wicked Witch of the West’.
When the day came for us to leave the Ashton Old Road, the bulldozers were only three doors away and the whole area was like the bombsites that had been boarded up by the council. It was rumoured that a huge new supermarket was to be built on the land where our house now stood, but at the time I didn’t know what that meant.
We drove to Bolton in Daddy’s old banger. The light-blue Ford Anglia, with its horrible cheap plastic seats, narrow bonnet, big front mudguards and frog-eye headlights, belched out clouds of smoke all the way.
We took only our clothes, some bedding, the television set and a few ornaments and trinkets. All our furniture was left behind. The shop had been stripped of all its goods the week before by a man who ran a similar shop in another part of Manchester. When we left, Daddy didn’t even bother to close the door. A thief would have to be pretty desperate to take any of the stuff we were leaving behind, he said.
None of us looked back when we drove away. I think it was a relief for everyone to be going. As far back as I could remember, there had been only unhappiness there. For Mammy and Daddy and for me.
Things could only get better in our new home, I told myself, and I willed it to be so.
I couldn’t have been more horribly wrong.
PART TWO
Chapter Fourteen
The journey to hell takes exactly 39 minutes and is made in total silence.
That is the time it took us to get to Nanny and Granddad Ramsden’s house in Bolton, on the north-west edge of Greater Manchester – the place where I was destined to confront my personal hell on earth.
Neither of my parents spoke a word during the 11-mile drive – Mammy because she had taken her usual quota of pills that morning and was in her customary limbo; and Daddy because he rarely ever spoke when he was behind the wheel.
I sat in the back, with my knees under my chin, hugging my legs and wondering what effect this change in our family fortunes was going to have on me. I couldn’t guess what kind of school I would go to, or what the children I would meet there would be like, but I did dare to hope that, with my lovely Nanny Ramsden to protect me, I would no longer be a victim of Daddy’s brutality.
I had seen my grandparents only on rare visits to Bolton and we had never stayed more than a few hours, usually for a tea of tinned salmon – which, perversely, despite my loathing for fish, I quite liked – in sandwiches with salad cream.
Granddad Ramsden was called Joseph, like my father, and that made me suspect that all men baptised with that name were the same – mean-spirited, bad-tempered and full of hatred for small boys.
He was a grumpy, unsmiling old man, who spent most of his waking hours in a high-backed wooden chair by the fire, either issuing Nanny with petty orders or complaining about everyone and everything to anyone who would listen and sometimes even if no one was there.
A retired miner, he usually dressed in an old-fashioned shirt with no collar and did not bother to shave regularly. I sometimes saw him in the bath or washing in the kitchen sink, stripped to the waist, and his back was covered with shingles. They itched like mad, Nanny told me, and probably were much to blame for his bad temper.
Nanny had been a weaver when she met Granddad, but had given up work after Mammy was born. They had moved into their council house in 1935, when it was brand new, and had later adopted a 14-year-old boy, my uncle Leslie. He had left home to join the RAF years before we moved in, and was himself married. Sadly, we rarely met when I was a boy, but later I discovered that Leslie was a kind and decent man.
From the very first day we moved in, Granddad bluntly let it be known that he was not happy having us there. He complained, long and loudly, that the house was far too cramped and tiny for the five of us, and that by moving in we had selfishly, and unforgivably, disrupted his life. He made it blatantly obvious to everyone from the moment we arrived that he hated us being there and wanted rid of us.
From the start, it was difficult to know which of the two of us he disliked most, my father or myself. He never had a kind word or a smile for either of us, and I know that Daddy loathed his being top dog in the house. They fought verbally often and loudly, and twice came to blows, with Granddad, surprisingly and to my secret delight, getting the better of Daddy.
That first day, when I dared to think that a peaceful home life was still possible, saw the first of their rows; and, as so often would be the case, it was about me.
There was no question that the place was small. It was a typical, cheaply and shoddily built, two-up and two-down council house. At the front there was a living-cum-dining room, at the back a kitchen and upstairs two bedrooms and a toilet.
My first question to Nanny had been to ask where my room would be, and she had patiently explained that I would be sharing a room with Mammy and Daddy, sleeping on a little bed in the corner. It was probably stupid of me to have imagined otherwise, but somehow I had assumed that, when we moved, for the first time in my life I would get a room of my very own.
My disappointment must have been painted clearly on my face, and obvious to everyone, because my father lashed out with the back of his hand and whacked me hard on the side of my head.
‘Wipe that expression of your face,’ he snarled. ‘You should be grateful you’re getting a place to sleep anywhere.’
That’s when Granddad exploded. ‘Don’t you go bloody bashing people in my house, Joe Seed,’ he bellowed. ‘I’m the master of this bloody house, and me and only me’ll decide when some bugger needs a thrashing, not you. Do you understand?’
‘I’ll give my boy a seeing-to whenever I feel like it,’my father shouted just as loudly.
‘But not in my bloody house you won’t,’ growled Granddad. ‘And if you don’t bloody like it then you can just pack up your things again and get out now. Nothing would please me more.’
I think I could be excused for having assumed at this point that Granddad had interfered in order to protect me. At least that’s what I thought at the time, and so I sidled over towards where he was sitting, believing I would be safer there.
A sudden backhander across my face from him quickly changed my mind. And, if this violent blow wasn’t enough to disillusion me, his words quickly left me in no doubt as to where he stood.
‘Don’t expect any bloody sympathy from me, you little tyke. You probably deserve your arse being kicked. But in this house it’s me who does the kicking. No one else.’ And he glared at Daddy, then down at me.
In just five minutes, all my hopes for an easier existence had been destroyed and I had been reduced, as so often happened in my life, to a sobbing, pathetic heap on the floor.
Neither Mammy nor Nanny had done a thing to defend me from either of the men during their outburst of anger, and I knew right then, at the very beginning of our stay in Bolton, that there was going to be no protection at all for me in that hou
se.
I think Nanny was as frightened of Granddad as Mammy was of Daddy, and it made me suspect that she too was used to receiving a beating.
I still wonder to this day what on earth had possessed my mother to make her marry a carbon copy of her father. She must have seen her own mother undergo suffering similar to her own on countless occasions.
So, nothing had changed; except that I could now look forward to being pounced on and beaten by two vicious, angry old men instead of just one.
It was clear to all of us from the outset that Daddy and Granddad detested each other with equal ferocity. They took great pains to avoid any more contact than was absolutely necessary, even to the point, or so everyone said behind his back, that Daddy deliberately arranged to work mostly nights in his new job as a supervisor at the telephone exchange. That way, he spent most of his days sleeping and we saw little of him.
In her parents’ house, Mammy was expected to sleep in the marital bed and could no longer avoid sharing it with Daddy by sleeping in a chair. It also meant, to my great delight, that Daddy could no longer force me into his bed to take part in the unpleasant milking sessions, and on the nights he was out working, Mammy, when she was conscious enough to remember, would suggest that I share the big bed with her, to be more comfortable.
Our room looked out on to our back garden and, beyond a dirt path, to a big area of allotments and then open scrubland.
Nanny and Granddad slept in the front bedroom, which was slightly bigger, and between the two bedrooms was the toilet. This was enlarged by the council after we had been there a few months, to make room for a fitted bath. But initially bath night still involved a tin tub in front of the kitchen fire.
The house, number seven, was one of dozens of identical houses in Raikes Road, a cul-de-sac that ran downhill to end in a huge area of wasteground which I soon discovered the local kids called ‘No Man’s Land’.
That’s where I learned to run to when I saw trouble brewing at home. I would use the excuse of walking Nanny’s dog, an old golden Labrador called Sophie; she had been rejected as a guide dog by the local school for the blind and would turn out to prove a better friend than most people I met in Bolton.
The suburb of Darcy Lever, where we lived, appeared to be one vast council estate. But Nanny’s attitude certainly didn’t reflect this, for she was as house-proud as though she lived in the poshest of areas. Every Saturday morning, she polished the furniture to a high sheen and the house always smelled of Johnson’s wax. There was a big sideboard in the front room with glassware in it and a china tea service which was never used.
Nanny loved green. She had a dark-green fitted carpet in the front room, which had dark-green and white wallpaper. That was the colour scheme in Nanny’s bedroom as well, while our bedroom had light-green and white wallpaper. When it came to the kitchen they must have run out of green paint. The walls were white and there were home-made scatter rugs on the flagstone floor.
Nanny also prided herself on never being a penny in debt. When the rent man came, every Thursday afternoon, she would always be waiting on the doorstep to pay him in cash.
Three houses uphill Raikes Road crossed the bus route into the centre of Bolton, which lay about three-quarters of a mile to the north-west, to become Long Lane, and this ran north all the way to the Bury Road, with the great expanse of Leverhulme Park on its left.
Just before this junction with the Bury Road, my new school was sited, next to a Catholic church which bore the same name: St Osmund’s. Walking to school along Long Lane, and just a hundred yards from our house, you crossed over a brick railway bridge, under which the Bolton to Bury trains ran through a deep cutting.
I didn’t know it then but that bridge and that gully were to feature in my nightmares for many years – and still do on rare occasions. The track has long since been removed, but at that time trains passed by there several times a day, and to me were still objects of interest rather than horror.
In the Ramsden house, I quickly established that the kitchen was the friendliest and safest place for me to be. It was away from Granddad, in his chair in the living room, and close to Nanny, who spent most of her waking hours there, creating wonderful dishes, such as steak and kidney pudding and jam roly-poly and custard.
After years of existing on sandwiches and fruit and rarely having tasted a hot meal, I was in seventh heaven. At least my stomach was.
The house always smelled of cooking, often of fish, which Nanny loved and I loathed, and of chicken soup, another of her favourites. She listened to the radio while she worked and never missed Woman’s Hour and The Archers. Away from the kitchen, she was a great fan of Coronation Street and Z Cars on the television.
Nanny’s cooking always tasted marvellous and there was lots of it. Breakfast was there waiting for me every morning before I went to school, and a wonderful hot meal greeted me when I came home.
Nanny was a large, cuddly woman who, although quite strict and a stickler for cleanliness and good manners, also liked to laugh, and generally, at least at first, she was cheerful when we were alone. I loved it when there were just the two of us, because she would tell me stories about her life and about Mammy as a girl and young woman. They were usually funny tales about trivial events, but sometimes they became quite serious.
It was during these one-to-one sessions with Nanny that I learned how my parents had met. Mammy had been sent up to a place near Blackpool to work in a wartime armaments factory, and it was there that she had met my father, who was a bomber navigator in the RAF.
Joe Seed had served throughout the war and had been on some of the most famous bomber raids on Germany. Sometimes, during the rare moments Daddy spent with us downstairs, Nanny would get him to reminisce about the mysterious war years. From the animated way he talked and even laughed, I gathered they were the happiest years of his life, though at the time I understood little about the stories he was telling.
Nanny also talked to me about Mammy’s childhood sweetheart, Harold Orton, though never when Daddy was there. There was a Salvation Army citadel in Darcy Lever where Harold was a handsome and dashing lieutenant. In those days, Nanny and Granddad were still devout Salvation Army members and Granddad even played a trumpet in the brass band. Nanny often sighed when she told me how much she regretted Mammy leaving home and falling in love with Daddy.
‘It was a wartime infatuation and nothing more, and that’s what it should have remained,’ she told me on many occasions. ‘Lillian and Harold were meant for each other. She should have married him. I like your Daddy, Michael, but I think my Lillian would have been much happier with Harold.’ Then she would sigh again and sometimes take out a tissue and wipe her eyes.
Harold remained a friend of my grandparents for many years and would often visit them. Eventually, he had married a lovely American lady whom he met through the Salvation Army, and he rose to become Deputy Commander of the whole international movement.
I met Harold again when I was much older and, probably because of his former fondness for my mother, we developed a lasting friendship.
Even though I was only seven years old when I first heard these stories, I grasped that Mammy might well have been a lot happier had she stayed in Bolton and married her sweetheart, and that Nanny would certainly have been a much more contented parent.
The Seed family may have loathed their son marrying a non-Catholic working-class girl, but Nanny Ramsden had been equally opposed to the match. She was deeply shocked when her daughter chose one of the despised papists, as she then considered him, for a husband and, worse, Mammy actually adopted his hated religion in order to marry him.
I didn’t know what religion was in those days, so a lot of Nanny’s stories went over my head, but I enjoyed going with her to Salvation Army meetings. The people there were always very kind and nice to me and I loved the brass bands.
Soon after I started my new Catholic primary school, however, I was ordered by the resident priest to join the church choir
and this drew some very dark looks from Nanny.
‘That damned priest is just seeking a way to sneak in here and preach at us for being Salvationists,’ was her reaction, and she may have been right, for on several occasions the priest called at our house to talk to my parents, he said, about my spiritual welfare.
Mammy and Daddy were never available when he called, so he got Nanny and Granddad instead. Well, Nanny really, because Granddad just stared straight through him as though he wasn’t there, and never spoke. Nanny wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the priest’s dog collar and gave him a verbal trouncing whenever he questioned her allegiance to the Salvation Army.
‘God doesn’t need idolatry to mark the path to heaven,’ she would lecture him, and eventually he stopped coming to the house.
Even so, the priest wanted me to attend the Catholic church on Sunday mornings and choir practice midweek, and needless to say I had to go on my own. If I did miss a Mass for some reason, I would always pay dearly for it on Monday morning, when he would cane every child who had skipped church on Sunday. And, if I mentioned that I had been to a Salvation Army meeting instead, he would become noticeably more angry and give me a second thrashing on my backside.
Strangely enough, I loved the mystery of the Catholic Mass, which was all said in Latin in those days, though it was much more fun going to Salvation Army meetings.
Only the priest and Nanny seemed concerned about my spiritual welfare. My parents didn’t care less which church I attended on Sundays, or even if I went to one at all.
Before my first day at St Osmund’s School, I had been nervous and frightened. I knew that the teachers and children would all be strangers, which was bad enough, but it also worried me that I couldn’t do any of the normal things in school, like read, write or do sums. I’d expected that all the other kids would make fun of me, as they had done in Manchester.
It didn’t surprise me at all when my parents made feeble excuses not to take me to school on my first day, and I resigned myself to getting there alone. But Nanny would have none of it. From that moment, as she did for the next ten years, she took responsibility for my upbringing – and because of that I loved her unreservedly in return. Without her strength and kindness, I would never have survived.
Nobody's Child Page 8
